The Best Mobile App & Design News

Ben Lee

CEO and Co-founder of Neon Roots

Ben Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Neon Roots, a digital development agency with a mission to destroy the development model and rebuild it from the ground up. After a brief correspondence with Fidel Castro at age nine, Ben decided to start doing things his own way, going from busboy to club manager at a world-class nightclub before he turned 18. Since then, Ben has founded or taken a leading role in 5 businesses in everything from software development to food and entertainment.

Have you ever been invited to a dinner a party and spent a good chunk of the night wanting to peek in the host’s cabinet, closets, or medicine cabinet? Well Ikea is now offering a little something to tide you over. Ikea’s 2013 catalog will contain augmented reality features that allow you to look inside those neatly uniform Swedish cupboards packed between their pages.

As you breeze through the new catalog, you’ll notice special symbols indicating bonus material is available through their iPhone or Android app. If you have downloaded the app onto your mobile device, you just launch it and point your phone or tablet at the symbol in the catalog. What appears to be a closed cabinet in the printed version will open up through your mobile screen and you’ll get to view the interior. The augmented reality features are also said to give viewers a 3-D glimpse of products and additional info and specs through video and digital content.

Adding a digital layer to traditional media is a growing movement in the retail sphere. A few magazines, such as GQ, have added augmented reality components to their pages. Incorporating this rising technology allows viewers to interact more closely with the products and the brand while also opening up new avenues for advertising creatives.

We can’t wait to check out the new Ikea augmented reality app. Wired magazine reports that the catalog and the app will be available on July 31.